The Birkman Method is a powerful instrument to shed light on relational dynamics and promote higher performance of individuals and teams. It is used widely and globally in the fields of career exploration, leadership & team development, hiring and talent selection and executive coaching.
What is the Birkman Method?
Birkman uncovers behavioural, social perception, and occupational interests which provide insights into your personality architecture and serves as a tool for personal and professional growth and successful organisational and team performance.
Realizing what makes you “tick” helps to understand how you learn, think, communicate, and relate to self and others.
We want to empower you to make better decisions, to increase emotional intelligence, and strengthen efficacy.
Birkman uncovers your…
- Natural strengths and behavioural traits
- Unproductive behaviours & blind spots
- Underlying needs & expectations
- Performance motivators
- Development areas to work on to maximize success
- Communication style
- Relational preferences
- Occupational interests which are matched with a variety of career paths, job families & job functions
- Tools to manage stress
- Data on nine different behavioural components
“The reality of life is that your perceptions – right or wrong – influence everything else you do.
When you get a proper perspective or your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other things fall into place.”
Roger Birkman
How do I book it and what does it cost?
How is the Birkman test taken?
The test is taken online (40 minutes), consists of 298 questions (250 true/false questions, and 48 multiple-choice questions). When you make a purchase via Ulrike (ulrike@pretorius.net) you will receive an online link directing you to the Birkman Method Questionnaire.
What will I get?
- Birkman Signature Report (32 pages, English and/or German)
- 2-hour Debrief session with me – I am an internationally Certified Birkman Consultant (fluent in English, German, Afrikaans)
- Insight Reports paving the way for your personal development and self-mastery
What happens in the feedback session?
In the session, we will not only unpack your results in the light of the issues you face and the goals you want to achieve. We take your expectations and challenges around your future success into onsideration and will plan an actionable path for you to pursue experiences and work that resonate with you. I want to stimulate your curiosity and possibility mindset.
I am dedicated to helping you to become “future fit” and “future-ready” in a complex world facing exponential technological changes.
The feedback happens online via Zoom (or face-to-face in Johannesburg).
What does Birkman measure?
Usual Behaviour
Needs
Stress Behaviour
Stress Behaviour describes our ineffective behavioural styles and reactions. When our Needs go broadly unmet, our reactions in social and work environments are less likely to be productive and more likely to lead to dissonance, demotivation, fight and flight behaviour. Understanding the underlying causes and manifestation of Stress behaviour helps us to self-regulate with increased emotional intelligence and stay on track.
Interests
What distinguishes Birkman? It reveals how you see things and gives you perspective on how others see you.
The Nine Birkman Behaviour Components
Social Energy
Your sociability, approachability, and preference for group and team participation
Physical Energy
Emotional Energy
Self-Consciousness
Assertiveness
Insistence
Incentives
Restlessness
Thought
Applications of Birkman
Leaders are required to be flexible and agile in the face uncertainty and the Covid pandemic which is by nature “indefinite”. Amongst the concerns are team cohesion, employee morale and motivation, solidifying talent strategies and managing teams remotely. Birkman provides data that taps into the underlying perceptions and motivations behind high-level decisions, strategies, and priorities.
Self-aware and resilient leaders are more likely to run their organsisations effectively while having vision and strategy to achieve goals in complex, uncertain and disrupted environments.
How Birkman Personality Assessment Tools assist Leaders:
- Gain the most robust understanding of who you are as a leader and the impact you have
- Sets the stage for ongoing professional development and growth by providing a complete behavioural view of self
- Improve leadership skills by understanding the link between your mindset, decision making, behaviour, and workplace image
- Expand awareness into how you experience, process, and relate to social dynamics in the workplace
- Become aware of your blind spots and how you may get derailed under stressful conditions
- Focus to communicate effectively and relate to others when in stress, conflict, or feedback situations
- Highlight your tendencies toward exerting control and authority when leading
- Mitigate negative reactions and ineffective behaviours in the workplace
- Reveals your motivational drives and the types of initiatives you’ll naturally value most
- Discover the gaps within the organization to manage risk and discover opportunity
- Become more effective at connecting high-level strategy to daily operations
Leadership success is not only based on intelligence, industry knowledge, and skill but also on ability to connect with others and encourage positive relationships across the organisation. Great leaders are intentional in developing self-mastery and emotional intelligence – the ability to respond rather than react and to be aware of and control emotions.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. But become knowledgeable about what can be known.
Managing, engaging, and sustaining effective teams has always been a demanding task but the remote or hybrid work environment and pandemic fatigue felt by many employees has put the spotlight (heightened) on the challenge even more.
Lack of employee engagement, miscommunication, tension amongst team members, lack of purpose and clarity may inhibit team performance.
The Birkman Method provides tools to Enhance Team cohesion and inter-team collaboration. Team members get individual feedback based on the Birkman Signature Report and will be invited to a custom-designed Birkman Team Day or Team Coaching Interventions.
How Birkman Personality Assessment Tools assist Teams:
- Improve collaboration by helping teams apply their differentiators to improve performance
- Gain an understanding of individual and team strengths, overused strengths, motivators, and expectations
- Help employees learn the skills and strategies to build three important elements into their team: Purpose, Clarity and Psychological Safety
- Create psychological safety to discuss individual styles and get more team input
- Increase emotional intelligence by developing self and others awareness
- Meet individual expectations and manage unproductive stress behaviours
- Boost morale by bringing clarity to the team’s purpose in a way that resonates with each individual
- Identify and leverage strengths to facilitate collaboration and maximize performance
- Understand perceptual gaps to manage blind spots
COVID-19 has had a big impact on HR and especially on the recruiting process. Remote interviewing, the use of analytics and AI are just a few of the trends influencing successful talent selection. Apart from concentrating on skills and competencies, research confirmed the importance of emotional intelligence, employee motivation and satisfaction to maximize employee fit and retention.
”HR experts say they recruit people for their intellectual intelligence, and fire them for a lack of emotional intelligence”.
How Birkman Personality Assessment Tools assist HR and Recruiters:
- Determine whether the tasks and responsibilities within the job role align with the candidates’ occupational interests and motivators
- Identify the unique, underlying social expectations that each candidate requires to thrive on a team
- Manage the stress behaviors that risk a candidate’s morale and productivity
- Craft deliberate interview questions to have a more helpful conversation to determine whether the candidate’s style and the job align
- Understand if a candidate’s personality is suited day-to-day work or if there may be a higher risk of burnout
- Identify the career interests and natural strengths that energize each candidate
People are your greatest asset. Talent development revolves around attracting, building, and retaining your employees in line with the organisation’s vision, strategy, and goals. Talent strategies also include career development opportunities. True talent wants to be empowered and seeks professional growth opportunities.
Birkman data can be the foundation to accelerate growth, manage stress triggers and blind-spots and recognize the motivators that drive career decisions.
Harness a more complete understanding of your employees’ behaviours and viewpoints compared to the workforce as a whole to boost morale and develop your talent.
How Birkman Personality Assessment Tools assist You Create an Engaging Culture Where Talent Thrives:
- Get an understanding of your employees’ behaviours and motivating drives
- Give employees the tools to utilize and build on their workplace strengths
- Leverage the individual motivators that engage employees and drive success
- Develop targeted action plans to accelerate each employee’s growth
- Keep employees engaged by meeting individual and organizational needs concurrently
- Use occupational interests and insights to shape future development
Birkman 360° is a multi-rater feedback survey which incorporates feedback on the client’s performance from multiple perspectives. These appraisals can involve the employee (client), supervisors, direct reports and peers, and illuminate the difference between the client’s self-evaluation and how he/she is perceived by peers. Birkman 360° is easy to administer online and takes less time to complete than most multi-rater assessments.
The individual’s performance is measured by nine different competencies.
Competencies Rated:
- Making Decisions
- Dealing with Conflicting Ideas
- Personal and Professional Growth
- Managing Outcomes
- Delegating to Others
- Developing Others
- Ensuring Long-Term Results
- Leading Others
- Building Stronger Teams
Peer feedback and leveraging multiple perspectives can drive professional growth and highlight both areas of strengths and performance gaps.
#1 For Students and Pupils:
How to continue the education track? What and where to study? Gap year? Which career will be best?
How to choose between all the options?
What to do when the career choice (study course) turned out to be the “wrong” one?
Should I train for a job function or do I want to be an entrepreneur? And which professions will have a
future?
If you are tossing around any of the above questions and need guidance in your decision-making process,
Birkman is FOR YOU!
Career Exploration for pupils and students – download here: (Birkman Brochure 2 pages)
#2 For Adults:
Do you want to switch careers? Re-enter the job market after a break or post-kids? Start your own business? Are you unaware of your purpose and passion? Suffer from burnout and job dissatisfaction? Birkman is a great starting point to find a career that resonates with you. The reports highlight the most suitable job families and professions and proposes best strategies for your job search and interview process. The personality insights are highly actionable and will empower you to navigate towards a career that connects with your interests and personality for sustained satisfaction.
Self-knowledge and self-awareness have become basic requirements for individuals facing the future world of work. They must be able to examine, reflect and communicate on understanding of self, their skills, abilities, values, and emotions, that could either enhance or limit their personal or professional growth.
Here is how Birkman can benefit you:
- Find out who you are and how you “tick”
- Align personal strengths with career
- Highlight which careers are most suitable for you
- Stipulate which work environment is the best for you to thrive in
- Not confident during the interview process
- How you best relate to self and others
- Gain impactful interview tips based on your personality
- Reveal your performance motivators and leverage them at work
- Plan your career direction
- Understand what communications and behaviors drive your best performance
- Highlight your personal value preposition to demonstrate value to employers
For in detail information on the Birkman Method, visit www.birkman.com